Anchor
by Jaggedlightning has a Bazooka
Summary: Piper sees the darker, more vulnerable side of the Sole Survivor. A side she never thought she'd see. Implied/Early SS/Piper Wright. Oneshot.


_Why does my heart go on beating?_

 _Why do these eyes of mine cry?_

 _Don't they know it's the end of the world?_

 _'Cause you don't love me anymore.._.

* * *

Sole Survivor Aaron DeWitt had stopped to rest in Sanctuary Hills for a few days. Rebuilding the world was tiring work for only two people. He'd been traveling with the journalist from Diamond City, Piper Wright, for a while now. They'd grown closer with each passing day that they spent together in the Wastes. Helping people and finding the truth was Piper's passion, and he didn't mind it one bit. Unless, of course, helping him and getting him to open up was part of it.

Tonight he was alone, sitting in the place that was once his home. The home that he had planned to spend many years in. Celebrate many birthdays and holidays in. But all of that had changed so fast. He wouldn't ever forget October 23, 2077. He wouldn't ever forget the flash and the mushroom cloud and the shock wave from the blast that came racing towards them just as the elevator started going down into Vault 111.

His family had been ripped away from him. His world had been torn apart at the seams and he was betrayed by a place that he was lead to believe would keep him safe. Damn those Vault-Tec bastards and their shitty experiments. Who the hell would want to use the surviving members of the human race for experimentation? Some sick bastard, that's who.

What the hell would they even do with the research data, anyway? It's not like anyone would be alive to put it to any use.

 _Oh hey! The world ended! But at least we have this research data that we can't even use now because everything is destroyed and everyone is dead! Thanks, Vault-Tec!_

Aaron knew he wasn't the only one who had been cheated, either. There were plenty more Vaults that had been filled with many unsuspecting people like him.

He bit his lip and squeezed his eyes shut as "The End of the World" began to play on his Pip-Boy radio. Damn Travis and his horrible timing with picking a song that he could relate to. It reminded him too much of what he had lost. His wife. His son. His entire life.

Nora couldn't love him anymore because she was dead. You can't _love_ people when you're _dead_. They had fallen in love in a slow burn fashion. It wasn't until tensions in the world started heating up and he was deployed overseas that they began to really fall in love each other. But it was love like that that became the strongest, most dedicated kind of love.

It broke his heart. He couldn't stop loving her no matter how hard he tried. He tried so hard to tell himself that she was gone. He listened to the Holotape that she sent him while on his last ever deployment quite often. It only made it worse. But her death was something that he wouldn't ever truly get over.

He opened his Pip-Boy and turned the radio off. He couldn't bear to listen to that song any longer. He stared at the wall for some time, his bottom lip quivering every now and then as he tried to keep his emotions at bay. He hated crying, and preferred not to do it. His despair got the better of him.

Aaron buried his face in his hands and began to sob, tears cutting trails through the dirt on his face. His attitude towards himself was like looking in a mirror. No one but him saw the broken and beaten down reflection that he saw.

So for a while, he sobbed quietly in the home he used to live in, while Piper and the others were asleep in the common house he'd built.

A rustling near the open door shocked him out of his moment and he quickly wiped his face, trying to rid all evidence that he had been crying.

"Blue?" It was Piper. "Why are you in here all by yourself? Are you okay?" The last question much quieter than the previous one. Aaron stood, death glare fixed at the wall in front of him before turning to face her, the regular hardened look on his face having returned. "Go away, Piper." He snapped.

Piper raised an eyebrow at him. Her face read 'Try me.' "I've been looking for you for an hour. I'm not going anywhere." She stated, sounding more annoyed if anything else. Leave it to Piper to nose around and get the truth no matter how painstaking it was.

The thing with Aaron was that he listened and learned all about Piper's life. He knew all about her situation with Nat, how she played a major role in making Diamond City what it is now through the newspaper, and how much she enjoyed helping people in the wastes. But he never opened up to her about his life. He wasn't sure he even wanted to. All Piper knew he was from the Vault, his infant son was missing, and that he was alive before the war. Obviously she had also inferred that his wife had died at some point since he was all alone when they met.

Piper was also the part of the duo who noticed the little things. This house that they were standing in had been his, she was certain of it. She'd seen him salvage equipment from other houses, get rid of the ruined ones, but he had left this house completely untouched. Even the car parked outside was still there. So was the mailbox, and the picket fence.

"You lived here." She proclaimed. It's not like it was some big secret, but she understood why he had left the place untouched. She probably would have done the same.

Aaron's normally annoyed and sarcastic demeanor had been replaced by a hard and unforgiving one. The stare he was giving Piper was one that she hadn't ever seen on his face before.

Aaron made an annoyed sound. "Yeah. It was. Big deal." He said with a roll of his eyes and a shrug of his shoulders. Then he went silent, they were staring at each other, now. Piper knew that it wasn't just a 'big deal' to him. He had called it his home, just like she called Diamond City her home. How would she react to coming back and seeing it completely destroyed? She didn't want to find out.

This was his house. It was destroyed like his life. But pieces of his life still remained here. Shaun's crib was still intact, so was the refrigerator, so were the notes and the grocery list written in Nora's handwriting that were taped to the refrigerator. Those things haunted him; they mocked him; they showed him the things that wouldn't ever be.

 _Godammit_.

Aaron grit his teeth as tears welled up in his eyes and he let out a broken sob. Tears that he had been trying so hard to hold back were flowing freely down his face. Again. He felt pathetic.

Piper let him cry alone for a moment, and then she found herself moving closer and closer to him until she gently pushed him to sit back down. She immediately sat down next to him and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him to her and holding him tight. His body was wracked with sobs, and all Piper could do was hold him. "Aaron." She whispered softly. The playful nickname had been forgotten. Aaron didn't respond.

"Aaron." She tried again, louder this time.

Aaron shook his head and tried to compose himself but he couldn't. He just couldn't. He had been strong for too long anyway. It was high time he had a moment like this. The human mind was an amazing thing, it kept feelings suppressed until you were out of harms way, and then it let you break. He had seen it happen to some of his close friends right after some intense combat during his time in the Army. He never thought he would find himself in the same situation. He always saw himself as too 'hardcore' for that. But here he was.

"Look at me." Piper's hands cupped his face and tilted his head up to make him look at her, her thumb gently stroking his cheek. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was wet from the crying. Piper bit her lip. It made her want to cry, seeing her Blue like this. But she wouldn't cry, for his sake. Damn him for being too strong for his own good.

"You can't change it." She told him, she knew he wouldn't like it at all, but she said it anyway.

Aaron grit his teeth. "Stop talking." He snapped. He was angry, he didn't want to listen to her little speech that he knew she had in mind. It was true; he didn't like it, but what she said hit him like a ton of bricks.

"What happened, happened. You can't change it. You're over 200 years old. Your old life is gone and it won't ever be the same again." Piper continued anyway, he was going to listen whether he wanted to or not. She went quiet as she tried to find the right words to say. She always had a way with words.

"I can't relate to your past because I wasn't in it. Hell, I wasn't even thought of..." She continued. "But you know what? I'm here now, in the present. That's something we can both relate to. You're helping people, rebuilding the wastes bit by bit. Just look around you! You help people more and more every day. You check on all the settlements you've established and each time you do you find that more settlers have come to make it their new home. You can't fix the past. I can't fix what was done to you no matter how damn much I wish I could; and you _know_ I wish I could." Piper's eyes were blazing now, it was always in her nature to help people. She didn't even like killing things, including Raiders. Of course, she made an exception for them, though. Raiders choose the lives they lived, while ghouls and robots didn't.

Aaron had calmed down some now, he was no longer hysterical, and found comfort in her words. They had grounded his thoughts. What really struck him was how much she seemed to want to change what happened and take his pain away. It made him realize that she felt closer to him than he thought.

"But you know what? It doesn't matter what was done to you. You're here now, you're helping people. You're helping to shape the world back into what it was before. It may not happen to turn out perfect and be completely rebuilt in our lifetime but at least you can say that it started with you. Who reestablished the Minutemen? Aaron DeWitt. Who helped make the world a better place? Aaron DeWitt." She said, her hands moved to his shoulders, and moved farther down to tightly grip the collar of his army fatigues. Then and she shook him once, twice, hard, as if violently shaking him would help him open his eyes and see all of the things he was doing.

" _Don't you dare_ give up on me. I don't think there would be any hope for the Commonwealth if you did." Piper's tone left no room for argument. Her hands moved back up to cup his face, wiping his tears with her thumbs. "You're here now. You're with me. We're going to help make everything right. I know it. You told me back when I interviewed you for the paper to not lose hope. Don't be a damn hypocrite and lose hope yourself, Blue." The nickname was back.

Aaron sighed softly and pulled away from her, wiping the rest of his face off himself. He missed Nora dearly, he was still grieving for her even though he knew he should move on.

He was sick of crying over her.

Piper was right, he couldn't change it. He was helping the world, helping people. She was right no matter how much he didn't want to admit it.

Honestly, he hadn't even liked Piper when he first met her. A 'muckraker' the mayor had called her. Now, Aaron couldn't imagine traveling without her. He couldn't imagine anything happening to her and would take a bullet for her if it came to it. In other words, she'd grown on him. He knew in the coming days he would have to open up to her about everything at some point; she would have to know. Plus, he was finding it harder and harder to hide things from her anyway. But he was starting to feel okay with that. No matter what, she was always there to ground his thoughts, calm him down, and let him know it would be okay. She was his anchor. She always would be.

 **A/N: What I find slightly annoying about Fallout games is that you can't really...Talk to your companions about what happened to you, about your life. You can listen and learn about everyone else but there aren't really any opportunities for you to share your story. Me? I think it takes away from some of the character development. Either way, I got to thinking and then this happened. Whether it's any good or not is an entirely different story. I tried to get a more serious side of Piper rather than the playful side**.


End file.
